Addler Chapter 1

Addler Chapter 1 gave many tips on how to become a better reader and how to make the text work for you. The author seemed to be very philisophical, and delved into description of books with all the power of his vernacular. Every sentence seemed to be redefining the last as he weaved his way from what is a book, to how do we make the book work for us, and finally arriving on "books aren't alive...you have to learn how to get what you want from them by asking and answering your own questions." I think the purpose of this chapter reading was to show the science of book reading. This article was very challenging to get through, mainly due to the heavy load of vocabulary but also the lack of anecdotal stories that we have seen in Tovani. I found myself zoning in the middle of the article, or skimming over several areas because I felt like the author was reexplaining ideas over and over. For example, the author describes a pitcher as active, a catcher as active, and a book as passive because it isn't doing anything in the relationship. He compared the book to the ball, and a catcher to the reader. I can visualize a catcher and a ball just fine but right when I do begin to visualize it, he switches analogies and begins on a new topic. The main idea I got from it was that not all books are entertaining, and we need to pay attention so that we can learn what we need to. Using the baseball analogy I guess I could say "you don't always want to play baseball, but to be a good catcher, you need to practice".